Indiais confident of seeing an explosion of its internet user base in India because the big man himself made this announcement yesterday in the AGM of Reliance Industries. Mukesh Ambani spent half of his hour-long speech on Reliance Jio’s plans.

Mukesh Ambani’s 100-100-100 Broadband Mantra

Few months ago I heard about Reliance Jio’s broadband vision. Reliance wants to launch its broadband services in India’s 100 largest metros/cities and are targeting to get 100 million subscribers in the first 100 days. 100-100-100 is their mantra.

4G-capable smartphone and tablet to cost below Rs 4,000 (as of now the cheapest 4G phone is priced at Rs 5,000). The biggest hurdle for the adoption of 3G services was the cost of 3G-capable smartphones.

Switch-And-Walk mobile app will allow you to copy contacts, messages, photos, music etc from any old phone (including feature phone) to the new R-Jio 4G-capable smartphone.

Monthly plan: Rs 300-500 (data usage details not revealed yet).

Over 250,000 kms of fiber optic cable laid across India. By 2018 this would more than double.

R-Jio is present in all 29 states of the country with physical presence in 18,000 cities/towns and 10,000 villages.

Wireless coverage to 80% of 1.3 billion population by December 2015. To achieve 100 percent network coverage by 2018.

Tele-density in India: Urban stands at 140%, rural stands at less than 50%. It would not be that easy to increase the penetration in price-sensitive rural India.

75% of the telecom revenue is controlled by Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, and Vodafone. These telcos generate 15-20% of their revenues from data services (doubled since 2012).

30% of customers account for about 70% of the Telecom industry’s revenue.

Reliance Jio Digital Services

Jio Drive, Jio Play (HD TV), Jio Beats (streaming music), Jio Money (digital payments) will be offered to each subscriber. These could be a competition to Times Internet owned Gaana.com, Tiger funded Saavn, Alibaba funded Paytm.

Their sister company Reliance Retail, which had a revenue of Rs 17,640 crore (Rs 417 crore profit) will venture into e-commerce.

Reliance Jio Will Fuel The Growth Of Local Language Portals

Sources say local language content will be offered on Jio mobile apps. R-Jio can expect a lot of first-time internet users from non-metros who are non-English speaking. What will this user base want to consume on the internet – could be content, ecommerce, govt services etc but they would want it in their language, not in English.

We can expect to see an explosion in the consumption of local language within a year. Oneindia.com is in the right space, rather in the right digital space!

Mobile Internet Users In India – Post Jio’s Announcement

In early 2015 we were at 300 million. India took 10 years to reach the first 200 million mark,

In mid-2015, India has 150 million mobile internet users. With the launch of R-Jio wireless broadband services, this number should double by April 2016. Looks like 500 million internet users in India by 2018 is a pessimistic projection, we should expect 500 million mobile internet users by 2018 (if R-Jio’s plans succeed).

Projections get to be wrong. In 2011 it was projected the mobile ad market in China for 2014 would hit $1.1 billion but in reality it hit the $7 billion mark! India should prepare itself to see the same growth in the mobile space. The mobile ad spend in India is set to grow from $170 million in 2015 to $942.5 million in 2018. If R-Jio’s vision is any indication of the mobile internet user base then it is safe to assume by 2018 the mobile ad spend will be few billion dollars and not just $942.5 million.

Conclusion

Every internet player in India – ecommerce, video, auto, classifieds, education, finance, entertainment, lifestyle, news, tech – will benefit from this upcoming telecom revolution, if they are in the local language space.

With such aggressive plans from R-Jio, India can expect to see a disruption in digital services, in the mobile space. Let the digital war begin.

Mukesh Ambani wants to destroy the digital divide in India. Finally, we can expect to see the internet inflection point soon in India.

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